After just four seasons, NBC’s The Good Place came to an end Thursday night with 2.35 million viewers and an 0.7 rating in the 18-49 adults demographic, as reported by Deadline. The heartfelt comedy’s final episode, which was 1 hour and 42 minutes, had main characters Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani, Jason and Michael work out the meaning of the universe.
The philosophical comedy, created by Michael Shur, delivered the best ratings the show has gotten since its season premiere. There was also an after show, hosted by Seth Meyers, that drew in a 0.6 and 2.06 million viewers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
By the end of the series the characters had actually reached the good place and had to decide what to do with the rest of forever in paradise. The message of the finale was the idea that paradise is only good because it doesn’t last forever. The characters can therefore, even in the afterlife, choose to walk through the door and end their time forever.
“It’s sort of an inescapable conclusion,” Shur said. “It doesn’t matter how great things are, if they go on forever they will get boring.”
The biggest twist came when architect of the universe, Michael, played by Ted Danson, is able to become human and live on Earth. Danson’s real life wife made a cameo in the finale as Michael’s guitar teacher.
“There’s really only one goal ever for a show finale, in my mind, and that’s to make people who have been watching the show and invested time and energy and emotion in the show feel like it’s a good ending. That’s really the only goal. Anything other than that is uncontrollable and unknowable,” Shur said of the show’s finale.
Shur has a nine-figure overall deal with Universal TV, and is already in works on an untitled, single-camera comedy pilot with Comedy Central’s Broad City alums, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky and Lucia Aniello.